


Beautiful Day for a Bad Call

by jesm



Category: 9-1-1 (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-22
Updated: 2020-04-22
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:40:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23783302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jesm/pseuds/jesm
Summary: Anyone who tells their therapist they have good moments where they know they should be happy but they just don't feel it, is clearly still healing.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 28





	Beautiful Day for a Bad Call

It’s a beautiful LA day—blazing afternoon sun softened by the gentle coastal breeze El Paso never had and rain from earlier in the week leaving the city with a little bit more green than usual—and Eddie’s shivering.

He’s sitting on the back of the engine, centered in a beam of sunlight pouring through the open bay doors, watching traffic move by out front—a little girl younger than Chris riding a training bike beside a man with a jogging stroller, a woman walking three dogs with the leashes tied around her waist and her head bent over her cell, an elderly woman pulling a cart full of groceries—and wishing it wasn’t such a beautiful day.

He wishes he was at the park with Christopher, maybe with the rest of the 118 and their families too. Denny and Chris get along well. Harry’s a little older, but he’ll join when there’s nothing better for him to do, especially if Hen brings the dog. The Cap could grill. It’d be warm in the sun. Eddie thinks he could be happy with that day.

“Hey, man, mind company?” Chim’s voice breaks the spell of the fantasy Eddie’s been spinning up and he jumps, knocking his elbow into the back of the truck. It doesn’t hurt, but it’s shockingly loud.

“Woah, sorry, didn’t mean to startle you.” Chim says as he climbs up beside Eddie and hands him a mug. Eddie takes it without looking and wraps his hands around it, grateful to discover whatever’s in it is hot, though the heat doesn’t reach past his fingertips.

“No problem, I was just zoning out…Thanks.” He adds. He realizes he hasn’t turned to look at Chimney yet and can’t seem to pull his gaze away from the perfectly ordinary flow of traffic outside the station house, so he gestures absently with the mug to convey his meaning.

“Sure.” Chim says and then lets silence settle comfortably between them.

Chimney takes tough calls better than any of the rest of them, as far as Eddie can tell. Or maybe he doesn’t and he’s just better at hiding it when things do get to him then faster at healing. Hen’s generally good at working things through and she asks for help when she needs it. She’d sought therapy out herself, after the accident. Eddie knows Bobby relapsed once triggered by a mass casualty call, but he’s been solid the entire time Eddie has known him—through the earthquake, the tsunami, even after getting dosed with LSD. He figures Athena is the right sort of person for him to be able to go home to, solid and experienced herself. Buck doesn’t like loosing people but he loves the job more. Eddie thinks this one will be hard on him, because there hadn’t been very many of the parts he loves to balance it out.

Every first responder processes the bad calls differently. Eddie isn’t sure yet where he’s going to come down after today. He feels like he’s still stuck in the moment before that, where the call isn’t over yet and the outcome isn’t set. Which is ironic, given this call had been fixed before they’d even gotten to the scene. They’d never really had a chance to make it a good one. Like they’d just been fated by some twisted deity to pull bodies out of the Pacific on a beautiful Spring day.

He wishes he could go home and hug Christopher. He also wishes he had another 24-hour shift ahead of him instead. Because eventually his brain will catch up with events and realize the call’s over, and he’s scared of where he’ll land when it does. Mostly, he just wishes they’d gone to the park to play in the sun.

The mug’s turned lukewarm instead of hot in his hands. Chimney drums his fingers on the truck but still doesn’t say anything. Eddie suspects Chim’s watching him, but he’s still just watching the traffic: a teen girl wearing tights with cats on them, an older couple dressed up for an evening out and holding hands, a colorful group of 20-somethings talking too loudly and probably not sober.

“Eddie?” Chim says finally, but when Eddie just shrugs and doesn’t turn to look at him, Chim gets up. The back of his hand brushes Eddie’s knees as he crosses Eddie’s field of vision to head back towards the loft.

The angle of the sun has shifted enough that the sunbeam no longer reaches Eddie’s perch. Guys from the next shift have started to trickle in and the chatter around the house has kicked up a notch. He’s a bit chilly in his LAFD t-shirt with a breeze drifting in from outside.

Hen stops in front of him and blocks his view of the street. She’s wearing jeans, a blue flannel shirt and her black leather jacket--end of shift clothing.

“Cap wants to talk to you before you go home,” she says.

“‘k, got it.” Eddie nods. He’s been expecting that since Chim left. Hen waits one beat. Two.

She’s too close for Eddie not to look at her without moving, so he’s staring vaguely somewhere around her left elbow. Three. Four.

Hen steps back, walks through the bay doors, and becomes part of the traffic outside where Maddie’s waiting to pick Chimney up. The two of them walk back to her car with arms interlocked, leaning close and talking quietly. Buck shoots Eddie a look and hesitates before he climbs into his jeep. Eddie thinks he’s probably wondering if it’s a good idea to leave him alone, so he smiles and waves. He watches Buck’s jeep pull out of the parking lot behind Maddie’s sedan and merge into the stream of anonymous cars.

Some of the guys from the next shift are giving Eddie weird looks. He’s probably been sitting on the back of the engine too long after the end of his shift. Bobby hasn’t come down yet, but though Eddie suspects the others left awhile ago, he isn’t really sure about the time. Carla’s with Christopher and hasn’t called, so he doesn’t have anywhere he needs to be. He’s still holding the mug Chim brought him; it’s full, but it’s gone cold, which makes it kind of useless. 

Despite the looks, Eddie knows he’s not actually in anyone’s way yet. He supposes he’ll move when they get a call, leans back against the cool metal of the truck in the meantime and wishes he had a sweatshirt. 

It’s not dark yet, but the flow of pedestrian traffic has slowed. People in LA never really walk much anyway, even on nice days. A trio of young women slow as they pass the station; one of them is wearing too much blood-red lipstick. They turn slightly towards him with smiles and friendly waves but Eddie doesn’t respond so they lean together and giggle before they disappear around the corner.

The alarm rings and the energy in the firehouse jumps with it, like someone playing a video on 1.5x speed. Eddie gets up and moves out of the way for the engine and ambulance to pull out. The space feels too big and too empty without them. He glances up to find Bobby standing near the top of the stairs, arms folded where he’s leaning on the railing and gazed fixed straight in Eddie’s direction.

They’d been on for 24 hours but Eddie understands Bobby won’t go home until he does. He’d asked to talk, so Eddie climbs the stairs and cuts directly to the table.

“Do you need me to tell you it’s not your fault?”

Eddie meets Bobby’s eyes across the table and feel’s like it’s been days rather than hours since he’s made eye-contact with other person. It’s grounding so he can say, firmly, “No. I know it’s not.”

“What _do_ you need?”

Eddie shakes his head. “It’s no one’s fault. There wasn’t anything else we could’ve done.”

There’s a frown line between Bobby’s eyes, or maybe it’s worry. “You’re right. It’s rough, but we couldn’t have done anything differently today.”

“I know.” Eddie looks away again and studies the wall behind Bobby.

“You know?” Bobby asks. At least it sounds like a question, like something he’s expecting a response to.

But Eddie doesn’t know how to respond. He doesn’t think he got the previous question right either.

“Eddie, I think you should make an appointment with Frank.” Bobby says it slowly, cautiously, like he’s still waiting for something.

“I have one. Next month.” It’s supposed to be the last. A final formality to sign off and show he has the fighting thing behind him. He does. Because if he were going to be angry still, wouldn’t he be angry now? He’s not.

“I think you should make one for sooner.”

Eddie shrugs, since it’s not worth arguing with Bobby about it. He’s about to say yeah, sure, but instead he says, “it’s the kid.”

“The _kid_?” Bobby asks. “The girl?”

Eddie hadn’t been planning on saying anything like that, or anything at all, really. He’d just been thinking he’d get through the conversation and then go home. So Bobby could go home. Now, he isn’t sure what he means. Still he nods yes, because there had only been the one kid, only the little girl, so what else _could_ he mean?

“The-the girl? On today’s call?” He’s not sure he’s ever heard Bobby sound this confused, as if what Eddie said couldn’t possibly make sense. When they’d sat here and talked about Eddie fighting, it had actually been easy. He’d felt like Bobby’d already known most of what was in Eddie’s head then, so he isn’t sure what to give him now.

Eddie nods again, but he feels uncertain about it. Maybe he’s wrong. Maybe there wasn’t a girl on the call today. He doesn’t think he’s far enough gone to be mixing up calls, but then again, if he were, would he know?

“Eddie, do you mean the little girl you saved?”

Eddie can see her. She’s younger than Christopher. There are cat ears on the hood of her sweater and blood on her face. She’s pale and still and cold when he pulls her out but not when they work on her. She opens her eyes, cries, holds tightly onto his wrist with small, warm fingers.

Eddie shivers. The Pacific never really gets warm and he’s been cold all day.

He realizes Bobby has pulled him to his feet, because he’s gathered into a firm embrace against Bobby’s chest. Bobby’s arms are warm and so are the tears on Eddie’s cheeks. He presses his forehead to Bobby’s shoulder where he can’t talk but that’s fine because there’s nothing else he thinks he can say.

“Eddie, you _saved_ her.” Bobby says. “You did good. You did your job and you saved her.”

Eddie knows it’s true. Knows that should feel good, because even if they only saved _one_ life, they saved one _life_. But he doesn’t feel it. 

***

Eddie is exhausted when he gets home. Carla doesn’t comment on the fact that he’s nearly three hours late without having called to let her know. Christopher is fed, in pajamas and sticking Lego pieces together into unidentifiable shapes on the couch. He grins up at Eddie and opens his arms for a hug.

Eddie reaches down, perfunctory, because he’s mostly still back on the call, still out in the cold waves, and still numb over the life he saved.

Chris wraps his arms tighter when Eddie starts to pull away and Eddie drops to his knees, hitting hard enough it’s jarring. Because, _Dios,_ the kid is warm—warm arms around his neck, warm breath in his hair, warm check against his.

Eddie gathers Chris closer and holds in a sob. Or maybe he doesn’t because a second later he’s fully aware he’s crying into Chris’ hair. But a least he’s warm with the two of them wrapped up in a hug.

He probably wouldn’t say he feels happy while he’s holding his son and crying over a bad call that could have been worse, but he _feels_. And he doesn’t need to fight it with anger or hide it from his kid, so he figures it really could be worse. Maybe it’s better.


End file.
